Torrey Podmajersky - Strategic Writing for UX: Drive Engagement, Conversion, and Retention with Every Word

UX writing is the process of creating the words in user experiences (UX): the titles, buttons, labels, instructions, descriptions, notifications, warnings, and controls that people see. Its also the setup information, first-run experience, and how-to content that gives people confidence to take the next step.

When an organization depends on individual humans performing specific behaviors like buying tickets for events, playing a game, or riding public transit, words are ubiquitous and effective. Words can be seen on screens, signs, posters, and articles, as well as heard from devices and videos. The text can be minimal, but is very valuable.

But what do those words do, how do we choose them, and how do we know when they work? This book provides strategies to use UX writing to help meet peoples goals while advancing our organizations toward converting, engaging, supporting, and reattracting those people. We structure our voice throughout the content so that the brand is recognizable to its audience. We apply common UX text patterns to ease and democratize the task of writing, and we measure how effective the UX content is.

If you need to write UX content on top of your usual job, you might be a marketing professional, technical writer, UX designer, product owner, or a software engineer. This book equips you with knowledge about what goals the UX content can accomplish, frameworks for writing it, and methods to measure it.

If you are or will be a UX writer, or if youre a manager or leader who wants to support a UX writer on your team, this book also gives you methods to demonstrate the value of UX writing and the impact it makes. In this book, youll find processes and tools to do the work of writing and the work of partnering with design, business, legal, engineering, product, and other stakeholders sanely, creatively, and scalably.

Chapter explains why UX content matters and how it integrates with the software development life cycle.

Chapter provides a framework for the voice of the experience to align the UX content with the product principles.

Chapter describes a process of content-first design for UX text, rooted in conversation.

Chapter provides patterns for UX text and demonstrates how they work in the three different voices of the example experiences.

Chapter presents a four-phase process of editing UX text to be purposeful, concise, conversational, and clear.

Chapter outlines three methods to measure the effect and quality of UX content: direct measurement, UX research, and heuristic analysis.

Chapter recommends tools and processes for UX writing, including drafting text, managing content review, and tracking the work.

Chapter shares my ---day plan to ramp up and be successful as the first UX content professional in a team.

Chapter concludes with advice about prioritizing UX writing work to be done.

Examples throughout this book come from three fictional organizations and experiences:

• The Sturgeon Club app, for members of a social club
• appee, a social game in which players compete by uploading images
• TAPP, an app for people who use a regional transit system

For clarity, Ive narrowed down the terms for the most important ideas in this book:

• Experience is the app, software, or other designed interaction the organization is creating for which the UX writer is creating UX content.
• Organization is the civic body, public institution, private company, or other entity that makes or commissions the experience.
• Team is the group of humans a UX writer collaborates with.
• People are the humans who use the experiences. Specific terms for people depend on the experience: people who use The Sturgeon Club are members, people who use appee are players, and people who use TAPP are